Getting Virtualization Back in Gear: Overcoming VM Stall Through 1:1 Virtualization

The potential benefits of virtualization are well documented: increased agility, improved disaster recovery capability, and significant cost savings due to server consolidation. However, many companies experience political and cultural barriers after virtualizing 15-30% of IT processes. IT leaders often cite security, compliance, and visibility as the primary concerns behind these barriers. This brief will discuss one potential strategy for overcoming this roadblock. Though the primary benefit of virtualization comes from the ability to consolidate multiple virtual machines onto individual servers, virtualization can make a significant impact even without consolidation. Unconsolidated or 1:1 virtualization alleviates many of the most common fears about virtualization, such as performance problems, VM sprawl, and server failures. Even without the cost savings of server consolidation, this technique provides meaningful benefits in both agility and disaster recovery, as well as a simple and manageable approach to virtualization. It is also an important stepping-stone toward larger-scale virtualization, which, with the right management tools, can harness the full benefits of the technology.